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"Welcome to Fascist America!

Gene Callahan | October 4 2006

My fellow Americans, it’s official now: We live in a fascist nation.

Now, the term "fascist" has been thrown around over the last fifty years in a loose way that has drained it of much of its meaning. If someone wanted to cut 5% off of a leftist professor's favourite welfare programme, the professor would call his opponent a "fascist." I’m not using the word like that. I mean honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, 1930s style fascism, featuring such old favourites as:

Secret prisons – they’re back!
Torture – we’re doing it.
Spying on all citizens.
Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial.
Rampant militarism.
Secret detention.
Enforced disappearance.
Denial and restriction of habeas corpus.
Prolonged incommunicado detention.
Unfair trial procedures.
(This list was compiled partially based on the work of Amnesty International, available here.)

An absolutely mind-numbing response to complaints that our traditional legal system is being torn apart is the question, "So, you want to protect the rights of terrorists?"

Um, no, I want to protect the rights of non-terrorists who might be falsely accused of terrorism! That was sort of, you know, the whole idea of our legal system. I’m sure there was some neo-con around in the 1700s saying to Jefferson or Madison, "So, you want to protect the rights of murderers and robbers?" but luckily they ignored him.

We’ve now gotten to the point where Nazi Germany was, say, in 1934. Remember, at that time, if you had told a typical German what his government would do over the next ten years, he would have looked at you as a madman. After all, his land had been civilized for over a thousand years. His was the nation of Albertus Magnus, Gutenberg, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Bach, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Heisenberg, Reimann, Mann, Lessing, Herder, Handel, Dürer, Leibniz, Gauss, Helmholtz – he could have gone on, but you get the point. His nation could not possibly descend into barbarism! If you tried to tell him he was living in a police state, he would have pointed out that his government had used its vast new powers very judiciously, and only against a few trouble-makers. So far.

It is interesting, in gauging the direction we are heading, to look at the proclamations of "respectable" opinion writers who support this administration. For instance, we have people at a "libertarian" think tank proclaiming that Moslems are not entitled to full civil rights in the US. (Perhaps we need to make them wear something special on their clothing like, say, a yellow star, so we know just who they are, hey?) But "conservatives" provide even more stunning examples of purely fascist reasoning. For example, conservative demagogue Ann Coulter has called for the editor of The NY Times to face the firing squad for his part in publicizing this administration's abuses of power. Let’s look at a recent column by Douglas MacKinnon at TownHall.com.

MacKinnon considers all of those involved in revealing the sordid collection of secret programmes that have been launched by the Bush administration as "traitors" who have publicized these schemes "purely because they don’t like the policies of the new president." Well, he’s right in that "they don’t like the policies" that they consider unconstitutional violations of our rights. Far from "aiding the enemy," these revelations aided us, the American people, by letting us know what our government has in store for us.

Consider what the point of classifying these programmes was in the first place, and who they were being kept secret from. The jihadists no doubt already knew about the secret prisons – their friends are in them! They surely knew that the war in Iraq has been helping their recruiting – it’s their recruiting! ("Praise be to Allah, Abdul, I read in The NY Times that it is the Iraq War that is sending us these thousands of new recruits – who knew?") They no doubt suspect they may be wiretapped – what they didn’t know was that all the rest of us are, as well. No, not one of these leaks helps terrorists, nor was one of them classified to stop terrorists from finding them out. We were the ones who weren’t supposed to find out about them.

MacKinnon continues: "And if even one American lost his or her life because of a leak, then I would want that person to be executed for treason."

So anyone who reveals our fascist government policies is a traitor who can be executed! This is obviously an attempt to intimidate the opposition so that our police state can be expanded without the annoying work stoppages caused by public outcry when the latest bit of construction is revealed. And just how does MacKinnon propose to show that some American lost his life because a journalist revealed that the US government tortures people across the globe, rather than, say, because the policies he supports have inspired a million new jihadists? Secret trial, perhaps? Or why even bother with trials for filthy traitors?

Herr Goebbels – oops, I mean MacKinnon – writes, "Until we severely punish those who leak classified information, then the traitors among us will not only continue to flourish, but will grow more brazen with the secrets they reveal."

Yes, what we ought to be able to do, you know, is simply seize anyone who even mentions our government’s "secret" prisons, and, without a trial, throw them in a secret prison! This is the logical conclusion of this fascist’s article, after all, since those who talk about the American Gulag are pretty much terrorists themselves.

Folks, this is coming real soon, and, once it does, domestic opposition is pretty much over. One journalist – that will be about all it takes – will be seized as a "terrorist" and thrown in the Gulag. The government may release him, but then another will simply disappear in the night in Iraq or Afghanistan, and rumors will circulate that he is being kept in a cage somewhere and waterboarded. No journalist lacking heroic courage will any longer be willing to seriously protest government policy.

America is full of decent people, who could never believe their own government could become fascist. So were Germany and Italy in the 1920s. But they became fascist anyway. They passed laws suspending civil liberties, but the government promised the frightened populace that those laws would only be used against targets like "Communist terrorists." And, a little bit at a time, the target kept getting bigger and bigger, slowly enough that the people who weren’t paying close attention never detected it.

And, next thing you know, there were millions of people dead! So, it turns out, it would have been worth paying attention after all."

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Originally posted by oldenglanddry:
I DONT SUPPORT BUSH BECAUSE:

I have morals, a conscience and am reasonably inteligent.

I also know the difference between kneeling down and bending over.

I recognise that there are other countries in the world apart from the good old U.S. of A. and that people actualy live in them.

I know that If there is a God, he would'nt want me to bomb people back into the stoneage just to prove a point.

I know that there is no such thing as a "Terrrssst". Nor is "F" the capital of France.

But mostly I dont support Bush because he is going to hoodwink you all into letting him have enough emergency powers to ignore the next election and stay in office, and by the time you've all realised whats going on it will be too late.

And serves you bloody well right.

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Originally posted by yinyang:
I don't support Bush because...

He's entirely unconvincing and frighteningly [stupid? evil?], both in his political policies, and his public speaking.

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Oh yeah. I forgot all about him being an inarticulate moron or at least being simply inarticulate.

Buy the ticket. Take the ride.
-Hunter S. Thompson

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Originally posted by misbehaven:

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Originally posted by yinyang:
I don't support Bush because...

He's entirely unconvincing and frighteningly [stupid? evil?], both in his political policies, and his public speaking.

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Oh yeah. I forgot all about him being an inarticulate moron or at least being simply inarticulate.

Buy the ticket. Take the ride.
-Hunter S. Thompson

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Originally posted by yinyang:

We don't need a regular guy president. We don't want a regular guy president. We want somebody who knows what they're doing, and will do things, if not well, fairly and honestly - at least, with as much honesty as most politicians can muster.

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Originally posted by misbehaven:
Do we really want honesty and fairness in our leaders? Are those really American values?

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Originally posted by misbehaven:

8. Because I think Church and State should be separated.

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Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution...if the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Though unconstitutional, as only "The Congress shall have Power...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof..." (Article I, Section 8, U.S. Constitution) the Federal Reserve Act was passed in December 1913; ostensibly to stabilize the economy and prevent further panics, but as Lindberg warned Congress: "This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth...the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust investigation, will be legalized." The Great Depression and numerous recessions later, it is obvious the Federal Reserve produces inflation and federal debt whenever it desires, but not stability.

Congressman Louis McFadden, House Committee on Banking and Currency Chairman (1920-31), stated: "When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists...acting together to enslave the world...Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is--the Fed has usurped the government."

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Originally posted by antimason:
. . . picture Bush saying "you're either with us; or your with the terrorists!" )

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Originally posted by Righteous9:

USMCHellraiser - I don't question the efforts of the soldiers on the ground at all,

but is seems to me the lives of Iraqis must have taken a turn for the worse if over 60 percent of them now believe it is okay to attack American soldiers.

I don't believe that's a failing of the military but of our administration. I have a hard time accepting 'better medical care' as something that offsets the much higher level of deaths in the country

Torture and rape going on in their cities before or after the war started? Again, I'm sure those of you there were doing everything you could, but your post doesn't convince me that things are better now than they were. They sound a lot worse.

.....

That comma comment was pretty horrible. Hopefully Bush will one day be remembered as an imapropriate colon.

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Originally posted by USMCHellraiser:
So it comes down to a question of believing people who are paid to report crisis and horror (the media), or a rational, literate, injured man who joined as an adult...

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Originally posted by USMCHellraiser:
I agree with a lot f stuff people are worried about (mostly the danger of dictatorship) but polite request:

WE did not have a military failure in Iraq, and Definitely not in Afghanistan.

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Originally posted by Succatash:

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Originally posted by USMCHellraiser:
So it comes down to a question of believing people who are paid to report crisis and horror (the media), or a rational, literate, injured man who joined as an adult...

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Thanks for your post, but sorry, it's more complicated than that.

It doesn't change the fact that invading Iraq was a huge mistake.*

All the reasons for invading turned out to be based on lies, or GIANT errors.**

It's not okay to keep making up new reasons to be there. And there's thousands of soldiers who went to Iraq and disagree with you.***

"Gott kann dich nicht vor mir beschuetzen, weil ich nicht boese bin."

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Originally posted by misbehaven:

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
-Bertrand Russell

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To be honest, I don't know myself if I would have the internal strength to keep my earned opinion if my family and friends were all against it without knowing. Fortunately, my firends and family asked me what the experience was, they didn't attack me or my beliefs based off of what they 'heard someone say', etc.

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Coolest Insurgent Act — Stealing almost $7 million from the main bank in Ramadi in broad daylight, then, upon exiting, waving to the Marines in the combat outpost right next to the bank, who had no clue of what was going on. The Marines waved back. Too cool.

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FremDFirma-

Funny thing though, Antimason - we disagree on so very much, at so many levels, and yet we, and many others who disagree quite strongly with our views, individually or the both of us, all see the same creeping fascism looming up behind us with an axe, don't we ?

It's silly to worry about all our little differences between folk when there seems to be a mutually acknowledged greater threat to concern ourselves about.

And I suspect no few of us, any of us, all of us, are doing our little parts, too.

The great grand plans of the established are worn by many things, broken on the rocks of adversery and arrogance, pounded on the surf of active resistance, but even so, worn away bit by bit, by the mere grains of sand that are the petty and honest defiances of common, decent folk.

See, plans like this happen to require us, the people - to play ball in order for it to actually occur, and we don't have to do so.

Remind folk of that.

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Originally posted by USMCHellraiser:
By the way, if I'm not wanted here, my bad. I just thought that you all might value info from someone who was actually over there.

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Kirkules- I support John McCain because he is running. McCain is running his campaign embracing the decision to fight the war in Iraq, and it's working out pretty good for him so far.

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You Bush bashers need to get used to the fact that your not going to have Bush to kick around much longer. If you want to help your side of the debate you might want to direct your efforts towards McCain where they might make a difference.

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Your only hope of defeating McCain is to hope the war starts to go badly before the election, and that just isn't going to happen.

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McCain like Bush realises that the huge sacrifices our military is making today will pay off down the road when the middle east becomes a peaceful part of the civilized world.

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That's the essence of what McCain meant by us being in Iraq "100 years". We've been in Germany for 60 year and it's been a good thing for the US and Germany. There's no reason the same thing can't happen in the middle east. Unless of course Obama or Clinton surrender before the job is done.

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Originally posted by Dayve:

I have never supported this man - as governor of my home state or as president of the lot of em. I could make a list - but lists are boring - suffice it to say, I dislike the policies of this administration and I most definitely do not condone the murder of innocent civilians.

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Originally posted by PirateCat:
For Dayve. What civilians are you talking about. Terrorists murdering Americans, Iraqis, or the Jews. But if Clinton bombs catholics in Bosnia to save mooslambs thats ok. I support the president no matter what party.

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